The mainstream media -
newspapers, television in India contains a lot of hype about software
development and outsourcing in India. But even in Mumbai, the
commercial capital of India , we do not have 24 hour electricity - we have
3 hours of load shedding daily. India also has one of the lowest
internet usage among all countries worldwide. The software developed in India
(domestic + exports) is 1/5th of the total software developed in China, where
computers and software are used extensively for local applications. On our B2B
website, we offer a large number of free services. Unfortunately Indian
companies are slow to use them, but companies from China, Vietnam,
Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand have used these tools for sales promotion.

One of the main reasons for the low
internet usage in India is the lack of relevant Indian content and costly
internet connections. We have had an internet connection for more than 5 years.
Our first internet connection was a dialup connection with VSNL - now part of
Tata Indicom. They still remain the most technically competent ISP in
Mumbai. They had a simple
webmail interface earlier, but now they use it to promote their other
services, with irritating animations. We also have accounts with Dishnet, which
is now part of Tata Indicom. Tata Indicom Broadband is also available in
some areas. They have launched unlimited internet usage packs starting from Rs
500 (+ service tax) per month for 64kbps

Airtel (Touchtel) Broadband services
are available in New Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Pondicherry, Bangalore,Madhya
Pradesh and some other parts of India.
They seem to have a limited reach. Reliance also offers internet services, but
you can only use it for webmail based services. Sify, Hathway, Iqara , Incable (Exatt) are other cable internet
connection providers in Mumbai. The customer service of Iqara is poor, they take
cheque payment for installation and do not install the connection even after 6
months, despite repeated followup. Exatt has a tieup with local cablewallahs. To
install their latest software, they will insist that you format your Windows XP
PC (with licensed software) and install Windows 98. For most cable connections,
some ports are blocked, so you often cannot upload information to your website.
In many cases, their engineer will not know about FTP (file transfer protocol)
and ports used for internet access.

If an ISP has a tie-up with a local
cable operator, the quality of their service is likely to be poor. The local cable operator, is
usually a politician or has links with the local underworld. These cable
operators are not very professional and they send their engineer for
troubleshooting late at night.

All ISPs charge between Rs 8 -12 per
hour for dialup connections, but the telephone connection provided by MTNL/BSNL/
Tata Indicom is far more expensive at Rs 20 - Rs 24 per hour. MTNL had
introduced a scheme by which you could pay Rs 500 per month for unlimited calls
to ISP numbers starting with 172XX. They have sneakily doubled the rates to Rs
1000 per month , without even informing the customers. This is mainly to
increase the broadband usage in India, - the consumers will find this hike too
high and switch to broadband. Also email services provided by most
ISPs are not reliable, for example mails sent to hathway accounts often
disappear. Mail from one of their customers

Kindly note that while
corresponding to us through e-mails, we request you to send e-mails on bmt@bom2.vsnl.net.in
/ bmt2@vsnl.net, since we do not receive our mails on bmt@hathway.com.

This year the Telecom Ministry
seems determined to increase the number of broadband users. Unfortunately for
MTNL (Triband ) /BSNL (Dataone) despite
attractive offers the number of the broadband users has not increased
substantially. This is because these schemes have a very low download limit -
400MB/700MB. The billing software is also not accurate. A person from Jodhpur
received
bills of nearly Rs 1 lakh (Rs 100000) from BSNL after taking a BSNL
Dataone connection.

Also there is very little India
specific information on most subjects. About 50% of the news in Times of India
or any major newspaper in India is copied from foreign newspapers and this is
also true for most websites from India. Other than chatting, email and playing
games, a computer with an internet connection can be used to generate a regular
income.

We have listed
offline work and
online work that can be done
using a computer and internet connection. Unlike
work at home scams , people have received payment for work completed for
several years, and no
deposit/investment is required.